Donald Trump may kiss the flag, but he’s fundamentally un-American. Our nation’s birth and history have been about developing democracy. As the Pledge of Allegiance puts it, “with liberty and justice for all.” That’s the moral lifeblood of our nation.
Trump is anti-democratic, intent on subverting the republic. He brags about his authoritarian plans and claims a president is above the law. He’ll turn America into a dictatorship, a repressive police state as vindictive and ruthless as Trump himself. Voting rights will be further eroded — if indeed we continue to have elections. Abortion rights, minority rights — everyone’s rights — will be hammered. He’ll attempt to crush dissent and free speech, to criminalize journalists (the “enemy”) and to cripple the First Amendment. While president, Trump reportedly harangued his advisers, wanting to know why Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden hadn’t been arrested. A recent Atlantic headline: “Trump Floats the Idea of Executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley.” There will be more tax cuts for the multi-billionaires; wealth will be pushed further upward. There will be more hunger, less compassion — the ruthless rule of the super-rich imposed by a lynch mob of angry, insecure “little people.” In the name of making America great again, Trump will destroy all that makes America great.
One source of modern American patriotism has been our heroic behavior in World War II, yet Trump resembles our then Nazi nemesis. Like Hitler, Trump is an angry bully who has embraced political violence and intimidation. He specializes in vicious personal attacks against any who cross him; he values cruelty. Pundit Robert Reich speaks of “a pattern of violence from the MAGA movement — and everyone from judges and prosecutors to members of Congress has been threatened and feared for their safety.”
“Political violence,” he adds, “is an inherent part of fascism.”
Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, one of the many Trump staffers who’ve turned against him, “has publicly supported a longstanding allegation that the former president spoke warmly about Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who Trump allegedly said ‘did some good things,’” reports the New York Post.
Kelly was quoted as saying, “It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater.” Apparently, Kelly and other staffers were trying to dissuade Trump from making pro-Hitler pronouncements.
Of late, reporters have called out Trump for anti-immigrant comments that echo Hitler vilifying various “subhumans.” Trump’s responses are noteworthy more for what they don’t say than do: He rambles on about how the Hitler book wife Ivanka said he kept by his bed wasn’t “Mein Kampf” (it was actually a volume of Hitler speeches called “My World Order”). But what we rightly expect to hear — an angry denial of the comparison and a denunciation of Hitler — Trump never makes.
Thousands of American soldiers died defeating the Third Reich, liberating the Nazi concentration camps and the peoples of Western Europe. As a nation, we’re rightly proud of how we fought and won what we see as a just and patriotic war: We were acting in self-defense, picking on someone our own size and generally fighting on the side of freedom and democracy versus the insanity of fascist dictatorship. Recall the dying words of Lt. Miller (Tom Hanks) in “Saving Private Ryan”: “Earn this.” Well, we don’t “earn this” by electing an American Hitler.
Trump’s disrespect for our WWII dead (“losers” and “suckers,” he calls them) is telling; his is a counterfeit patriotism — flag-smoocher’s dumb red-white-and-blue demagoguery. Since he neither understands nor respects American democracy, he neither understands nor respects the United States of America.
Paul Dougan is a writer and a pro-democracy advocate. He is a Longmont resident.
